Wednesday, December 05, 2018

It will probably not surprise anyone here to know that the globomedia is completely misrepresenting the Yellow Vest protests in Paris. This is a post by an American living in Paris about what is really going on with the gilets jaunes.

It's important to note that the majority of protestors are middle aged, these are not college or university students, who make up the usual French protests. This is a grassroots protest. It's been reported anywhere from 50-80% of the French support the gilets jaunes. This is NOT just about taxes.

The protests began over the new taxes imposed by Macron's government on fuel. The taxes are viewed as punishing those who use cars and those who can't afford to buy newer ones. The French already pay heavy taxes on fuel, along with high tolls on highways. Every car in France is required to have 2 high visibility vests (gilets jaunes). The protestors began wearing those vests while protesting.

Along with this, the cost of living is incredibly high while salaries are painfully low, especially in larger cities like Paris. The myth of government-ordered 35 hour work weeks isn't the reality for most salaried French people. Taxes eat huge chunks of their money and the French are fed up with making the same amount in their salaries as those who don't work at all and rely on government assistance.

Parts of France are also filled with unassimilated migrants. These migrants get government assistance as well. A large part of the French are sick of paying for migrants when French people are suffering as well. There are areas that have stopped being culturally French and cities the French avoid for holidays because of the migrant problem.

In addition to this, retired people have been lodging their dissatisfaction with their retirement pensions (one woman in a video circulating around French Facebook confronts Macron about having to live off of 500€ a month) and Macron's reactions have been condescending across the board. He currently has about a 26% approval rating.

All of this started bubbling up a few weeks ago as the protests began with the gilets jaunes in November. The protests last weekend got violent. Statues at the Arc De Triomphe were broken; the Arc was defaced. In Marseille, an 80 year old woman was killed as she was closing her shutters. The police threw a tear gas canister at her window. While outside of larger cities, many police officers and firefighters are taking off their helmets and/or standing in solidarity with the gilets jaunes. There have been reports that they have also refused to shake Macron's hand and have turned their backs to government officials while serving in official capacities.

On Monday (December 2), there was a protest by the ambulances in Paris. They stood at Concorde with lights flashing and sirens sounding. Truck drivers have also showed their solidarity. They have also driven through Paris with lights flashing to show their dissatisfaction. Roads have been closed down by gilets jaunes and they are blocking access of oil in both ports and at stations. As of posting, over 650 stations are on a list of facing shortages or out of fuel. During yesterday's news cycle, many truck drivers were seen disrupting broadcasts by honking in solidarity with the gilets jaunes.

On Tuesday (December 3), the French government spoke about their plans for "appeasement" of the gilets jaunes. Their offer was to postpone the start date of 3 taxes (related to fuel). This offer has been scoffed at by the gilets jaunes, who have called it "crumbs" as the taxes haven't even been implemented yet and the offer does nothing to address the issues regarding cost of living.

Along with this, the French have begun demanding that Macron refuse to sign the UN Migration Act on December 10. This has begun appearing across the Facebook groups and events but has not been widely reported in the French media as far as I can tell.

This has culminated in everything from demands Macron step down to the creation of the 6th Republic. There are protests planned for Saturday across France. The protestors are calling the Paris protests ACT 4. They are quoting from the French National Anthem ("Aux Armes Citoyens") and planning to protest at Bastille. The medical community is also participating in the protests on Saturday.

TLDR: This is bigger than taxes. These aren't your usual French protests.

150 Comments:

They, the French, have however elected those who have done this to them. They need to recognize their own culpability. They have the Right to change their minds and demand the government they desire but they need to start with themselves and stop electing the Leftists who work for evil.

You know it's serious when the Police are siding with the demonstrators...We have been in France several times in recent years, and the ordinary people do not look happy, while Africans lounge around in 2000 year old towns...

TLDR: This is bigger than taxes. These aren't your usual French protests.

Considering the nature of the French to create a new republic at the rate of one every sixty years or so, historically these are "usual French protests".

I fear that the call for a republican reform with so many migrants present may lead to some groups agitating they be at the table for the new government. With what later groups have done to the US with its Constitution as a supposed check, God help the French if those groups get a hand in setting up a republic in France.

Evidence that Satan owns the material world is that this keeps happening no matter what system of government that is tried. Government always becomes the enemy and rules against the best interests of their own people. It then actively tries to destroy them.

Yes, all obvious, but multiple Black-Pilled shills will show up with flakey BS, touting their weird meaningless views and distractions. As in, hey Nobody, who cares about the vote as that's all phony anyway. This Movement is the real deal, and expresses true desires.

My take again:

There is an actual revolution blooming, and it will have some pauses, and interruptions, but it will keep going, and the EU will be one of it's casualties.

I’m never very reliant on any prophecies if Saints, however, this is starting to play out as a prophecy I read concerning the beginning of the apocalypse.

Again.... I don’t put any stock in it, but it sure is interesting.Bergoglio as herald of the antichrist....France starting to burn and setting off the start of global wide protests/wars may be the next one.

Might be time to buy three large consecrated candles and good quality shutters for the three days of darkness that should kill most of the population off....Just saying...

I've just returned from 4 years in Luxembourg, which is adjacent to France and have been intimate with a French woman and her family. Her parents live on a pension of euro 4000/year. Her mother doesn't understand how Macaroon was elected when everyone she knows voted for Le Pen. The article reads true. And the French, like Americans take a long time to get pissed (Awakened Saxon), but when they finally get there.... Imagine defacing the Arc de Triomph!!! Like the Lincoln Memorial.....

@9 Satan does not own the material world but is a squatter. Read all the gospel passages about taking things by force and warfare in the spiritual realm. Roaring Lions seeking to devour people must be killed, along with the jackals.

Because the west has become de-Christianized, it has become the abode of demons, just like the nether-regions of Africa or South America where cannibals still live. Beyond that, the devil hates everything Christian so seeks destruction.

"We try in Ca but the majority want super majority of liberals in power. What to do?"

Time to make like a tree and leave. What's happening in France sounds similar to CA just a Euro version... as France goes so does the rest of Europe? The globalTARDS NPCs overplaying their hand in a rush to build Tower of Babel 2.0. Obviously globalTARD NPC leadership is still mostly run by boomers.

“Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

I spoke with a friend of mine this a.m. who is a right winger in western France to tell him American patriots are with you. He compared it to the Boston tea party that presaged the american revolution. I said that "last time we said 'wait until you see the whites of their eyes!' When fighting the Brits, because if we had said 'wait until you see the whites of their teeth!' We all would have been overrun"

Say like the Windsors, or the Dutch Royalty, who are known to be some of the leaders of the Baal/Satanic demons. They are deep into the worst of this evil, and you want to bring back a French King? What do you worship?

@35 French aren't Teutonic, they're still Gallic mostly, hence the term Gallic temper and their infamous incivility and tendency to protest, but like other Europeans they also have a 'Snap' moment when things go from 'Hey I'm pissed about thing' to dumping handcuffed bodies in the Seine.

@39 The Satanists have tried their damnedest to strip Europe of its Christian kings for the past two centuries and have only spared some they have managed to turn to their own ends, or did you think the French revolution was actually a good and just thing that God approved of? Are you high?

They, the French, have however elected those who have done this to them. They need to recognize their own culpability. They have the Right to change their minds and demand the government they desire but they need to start with themselves and stop electing the Leftists who work for evil.

I'm going to call bullshit on that. The problem with democracy is that you have minimal margin of error. First of all, it only ever works in a high-trust society, but a high-trust society is vulnerable to infiltration by low-trust parasites. With a democracy, the observable result is that by the time the high-trust folks realize they've been taken advantage of, it's too late to vote themselves out of the problem.

So in France, either the gilets jaunes intimidate (that's not voting) the globalists and their invader migrants into backing down, or things will eventually devolve into violence.

We face the same problem here. There are more sane, productive Heritage Americans in California today than were in all the colonies at independence, but they're never going to vote themselves out of the mess they're in.

I recall VD saying a long time ago that the real pushback would come in Europe. There are indications that this is actually starting to happen there. Salvini has been really pushing back in Italy - much more than just tough talk or tweets to trigger SJWs into insanity. Looks like the Yellow Jackets are nationwide in France and might be serious about taking down the clown Macron. There's even a report of a big win for a populist party in Spain. Orban, Salvini, Poland, Austria and Slovakia have all rejected the UN migration treaty - which (among many other evils) outlaws all criticism of migration (invasion). Germany's puppet legislature already ratified it, as did Sweden's. Macron wants it for France. The Euros might be starting to wake up - even in the west.

Some of the critical response to this is that the protesting french think wealth is a zero sum game.

I know that it's far more complex than that and the zero sum game seems, from a cursory look, to be fallacious, but I don't understand the economics very well.

I know, theoretically, apart from a gold standard, money can be generated based on Gross value (it's done federally, it's done with shares in a company). But reality seems to fall somewhere closer to the zero-sum than not zero-sum (lest we become so inflationary we end up like pre-hitler germany).

They aren't Parisians, or big-city folks at all. These are small- and mid-sized town, working-class people from 'flyover' France, who absolutely need a car to get to work. Retirees too, who've seen their pensions decline under Macron. They are low-income, blue-collar, patriotic in a country that sneers at patriotism. They are also overwhelmingly native French. One might call them France's 'deplorables.'

Servant of the Chief wrote:@39 The Satanists have tried their damnedest to strip Europe of its Christian kings for the past two centuries and have only spared some they have managed to turn to their own ends, or did you think the French revolution was actually a good and just thing that God approved of? Are you high?

Did I say that the French Revolution was a good thing? Nope, stop putting words in other peoples comments.

Bloodlines, what is known is that nearly all of the current Royalty is on board with the Satanists 100%. Including the Windsors, the Dutch, and the remaining Italian royalty, are all some of the leadership of the NWO all the way to the child trafficking and sacrifices.

Bloodlines, as they believe they are superior beings, beyond human, and the rest of us are sheep to be "harvested." It's all in their Egyptian symbols, as they believe they are descended from the Gods.

Admitted, the royal lowlife are only a small part of this, as there are millions of high to medium level Baal worshipers. In the past not all were in on this, and a good example would have been Czar Alexander and his family, but they were murdered with extreme hate, because they stood in the way. Putin is now hated for the same reasons.

The Satanists have tried their damnedest to strip Europe of its Christian kings for the past two centuries and have only spared some they have managed to turn to their own ends, or did you think the French revolution was actually a good and just thing that God approved of? Are you high?

Satanists, whether the kind whose names echo through eternity or those native types who generally take orders from them, have more than one method of subverting a monarchy. Infiltrating a monarchy whose spending was irresponsible from overseas empire-building and wars is one method; direct overthrow by a crazed mob of led by Satanist criminals (as in 1789) another. The former method - alluded to by tuberman - is actually more often encountered in history and was employed to lead to the situation which resulted in the reign of terror (French populace was facing starvation by 1789). Infiltration and subversion often works quite nicely all on its own. The Queen of England is head of the Anglican church, for example. It's a 'church' only in the same sense the 'Church of Satan' is - quite literally.

"They aren't Parisians, or big-city folks at all. These are small- and mid-sized town, working-class people from 'flyover' France, who absolutely need a car to get to work. Retirees too, who've seen their pensions decline under Macron. They are low-income, blue-collar, patriotic in a country that sneers at patriotism. They are also overwhelmingly native French. One might call them France's 'deplorables.'"

MPAI includes globalTARD NPC leadership as well, even a farmer knows you don't keep working the soil or milking the cows all the time.

These are statistically impossible events, until you account for cheating.. so "What is to be done?"

Shoot the bastards and let their bodies lie on the ground to rot???? Get off your arses and do something. We have 10% turn outs for elections where I live and the people just complain. If you don't participate actively, you will participate passively and you still get what you asked for.

Yellow vests in France. Marine Le Pen. What of Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson? Not the faces or personalities, but the directions. The reception. The direction of either, in terms of what the people of the UK will be moved by, will separate themselves from the EU under. What is it the people of the UK will turn against, and which of the two directions will help them do that (or both/neither)? Is Farage accurate, or snobbery holier than now (useful/not). Is there a spark in common in France and the UK?

“He predicted ‘absolutely calamitous’ scenes of drunken thugs brawling outside Downing Street will be used to discredit leaving the EU ‘for years to come.’”https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/7899373/nigel-farage-quit-ukip-fears-party-turns-bnp/

Bloodlines, what is known is that nearly all of the current Royalty is on board with the Satanists 100%. Including the Windsors, the Dutch, and the remaining Italian royalty, are all some of the leadership of the NWO all the way to the child trafficking and sacrifices.

There is considerable evidence that this is true. The splits in the church (1054, reformation, etc.) ultimately led to the loss of the church's ability to act as a restraint on monarchs (Henry VIII being an excellent early example). "Do what thou wilt" became the norm with monarchs rather than the exception. All too often, they were the "too big to fail" folks of their time. It's also worth noting that the infamously evil Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi was himself partly a descendant of the Austrian nobility (possibly also from Japanese nobility on his mother's side).

The difference between California and France is that in the case of the former you can sell up and move to Nevada or Texas or any of the other 47 states. While in theory the French have freedom of movement within the EU, if you're unilingual it's going to be tough going finding employment elsewhere, assuming that economic conditions aren't worse than in France.

Or is growth of wealth a slow gradation over, possibly, decades that is little comfort to someone needing something now?

The slow gradation would be a sliding scale, wouldn't it?

OC says:Money isn't wealth, it's a claim on wealth. If that claim isn't based on past production, it is a fraudulent claim.

So wealth can't be created out of nothing. But if all the work you put in the last year results in barely making it while your boss is making a ton, then I can see why you aren't looking at wealth as not a zero-sum. You're seeing that what you helped produce is resulting in negligible tradeable gains for yourself at that snapshot in time.

If you need gas to get to the hospital or your job and the people who run the place aren't having those issues while you are, throwing zero-sum theory out there is cold comfort.

“He predicted ‘absolutely calamitous’ scenes of drunken thugs brawling outside Downing Street will be used to discredit leaving the EU ‘for years to come.’”https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/7899373/nigel-farage-quit-ukip-fears-party-turns-bnp/

I think Farage has lost the plot. He is afraid of being called racist.

Miserables, more like it. As in Les Misérables: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMYNfQlf1H8

> But reality seems to fall somewhere closer to the zero-sum than not zero-sum

Within the time frames most people use day to day, economics is a zero-sum game. It takes savings and productive investment of same to grow wealth. That doesn't happen overnight. It takes months or years, sometimes decades.

Within the time frames most people use day to day, economics is a zero-sum game. It takes savings and productive investment of same to grow wealth. That doesn't happen overnight. It takes months or years, sometimes decades.

Not only that. Those who have already made it generally don't want to be displaced so they will put all sorts of obstacles in your way.

> The essentials, such as housing, education, and food, are MUCH more expensive and much lower in quality than they were in 1800 (when accounting for inflation).

Two out of three ain't bad. Wrt housing and education, you are almost certainly correct (though the modern house has a lot of creature comforts a house in 1800 didn't have). Wrt food, I don't believe you are correct. We have access to more food and a greater variety of food than ever before.

With out politicians and technocrats fleeing France in fear for their lives, without the bodies of said classes decorating lamp posts or floating in the Marne or the Seine, none of this will matter. If the powers that be are allowed to remain in power, then the next time the peasants get ideas they will be met with deadly force from the start. Where do you think the sudden push for an EU spanning military, without a posse comitatus restriction, has come from?

The unnatural peace of Post WWII Europe is drawing to a close. May Madame Guillotine awake thirsty and drink deeply.

"I fear that the call for a republican reform with so many migrants present may lead to some groups agitating they be at the table for the new government. With what later groups have done to the US with its Constitution as a supposed check, God help the French if those groups get a hand in setting up a republic in France."

Or it might just spark a civil war which will solve the problem for the forseeable future, and embolden the rest of Europe to get send the message to their African invaders that "suitcase or coffin" are the only choices on the table.

Within the time frames most people use day to day, economics is a zero-sum game. It takes savings and productive investment of same to grow wealth. That doesn't happen overnight. It takes months or years, sometimes decades.

So short time preferences are zero-sum while long time-preferences are not?

Would an economy built on short-time preferences resemble more of a zero sum with long term economic death?

And are the US and European economies built on short time preferences?

A real estate bubble has reduced affordability of housing in several countries? That bubble is a result of financializing the housing market. It's recent, and going to be temporary. see this.

I was able to build my current house for about a year's income, and that was also possible a century ago. It's a much nicer house than could have been built a century ago.

If my grandparents were alive, they would tell you that we have it a lot better today than they did in 1919. In the post-WWI boom my grandfather worked many more hours than I do, couldn't get any food out of season, growing up he couldn't afford to finish high school, couldn't afford to buy a house for many years, never in his life had central heating or air conditioning.

Real wages in the US have been stagnant since 1974, but I think we're doing better than 1919, housing bubble and all.

We bought an existing home in 1994 on roughly 45 acres of land for $60K. My income at the time was around $40K. This is is about 90 miles from Pittsburgh. I agree that building a new one is more problematic.

67. wahr01 December 05, 2018 1:18 PMWe wish we did. The essentials, such as housing, education, and food, are MUCH more expensive and much lower in quality than they were in 1800

bullshit.

hunger, thirst, disease and cold were regular features of life in the 1800s. the wealthiest of kings had no AC.

people died of sepsis and bacterial infections all the time, to say nothing of viral diseases and child birth.

right now, today, i can drive to an airport less than 15 miles from me and be almost anyplace on the planet in 24hrs or less.

when i was growing up, people were still scared of dying. from the annual flu outbreak. nowadays, you're more likely to have a reaction to the flu shot, if you waste time getting one. polio was still spoken of in hushed terms.

you may not much care for the 'quality' of the products you buy ( nobody is stopping you from making your own ) but you have no lack of quantity. and i was raised by people who still remembered lean times when they would have snow in their bed rooms, because the farm house didn't seal.

and then that got blown away in the Palm Sunday tornadoes.

can you imagine the hay that AGW loons would make with a Palm Sunday outbreak today?

"The outbreak also made that week in April 1965 the second-most-active week in history, with 51 significant and 21 violent tornadoes."

Apparently the Danes have quitely found a big set of brass balls and a sense of humour.

"Denmark has taken a bold new step in its efforts to combat the influx of illegal aliens: send them to a remote island....From 1926 until earlier this year, Lindholm Island was the site of laboratory facilities to research contagious animal diseases"

> hunger, thirst, disease and cold were regular features of life in the 1800s. the wealthiest of kings had no AC....

Lot's more snipped.

All true Bob, but that has nothing to do with the cost of a home or the quality of the house as such. Our current home is over 100 years old. Do you expect any home built in the past 30 years to still be standing after that much time?

People were able to buy housing, food, and access other essentials AT THE CURRENT TECHNOLOGY OF THE TIME for far less as a proportion of income than now.

The presence of techno-clutter doesn't make that any different.The advancement of medical technology and science doesn't make that any different.

You'll note those outbreaks of disease, etc, happened in wealthy as well as poor neighborhoods.

You don't get to act as if the normal advancement of technology somehow makes average people wealthier today when they're having to work 3 part time jobs for a slave box and eat processed garbage that makes them into blimps.

It took the French longer to reach this point than I anticipated. For the past year, I honestly thought they had given up on themselves entirely. Now I need more popcorn. We all must support the French in spirit and in words. Do not let them go back to sleep until more of Europe wakes.

I've been reading Résistance républicaine website and the Ligue du Midi website since lunch, and it is beginning to seem to me that this is a right-wing movement, specifically nationalist and *identitarian.* Explanation below.

On both sites there are articles dated today, referring to the attempts of "leftists" to horn in on the Yellow Vest uprising.

Here's a quick translation of an article dated today from the Ligue du Midi site:

"Lots of people demonstrated in downtown Bordeaux Saturday 1 Dec. At least three times the number of the preceding Saturday. The prefect [of police] had prohibited [the demonstration] and that certainly discouraged a lot of [would-be] protestors. Although on 27 Nov the cops had accompanied the crowd, rerouting traffic to avoid incidents, this time things turned out to be less calm. The police, with fewer numbers, blocked the marchers and used tear gas and "flashballs" to compensate for their numerical inferiority. Result: Numerous injuries, some of them serious, the flashballs having hit some people in the face. Leftists managed to insinuate themselves into the crowd, but the demonstrators were able to kick them out. Same thing with the trades union folks, who arrived with cars and loudspeakers and got booed and then [they] pitifully turned tail. As we have [already] shared [with you], this is a time of heated revolt; of refusal of what the govt wants to impose upon us: financial suffocation of working people and of retirees under the false [lit.: "lying" = "mensongers" in the orig.] pretext of catastrophic climate change. Don't give an inch. We are the country; we are France. They have to go back [orig.: "Ils doivent partir."]

So there is direct mention of the yellow vest marchers expelling "leftists" and trades unionists from the march, and direct mention of working people and retirees being suffocated by the govt's lunacy.

But what I think might be most telling of all is their use of the phrases "We are the country. We are France." because, to me anyway, that seem to be a direct reference to or echo of the PEGIDA slogan "Wir sind das Volk."

The Ligue du Midi is a self-declared "identitarian" organization.

Also, at Résistance républicaine site today is an outtake of a Facebook Live post by a man by the name of Eric Drouet, a trucker:

"Next Saturday it's all over. Next Saturday [meaning the 8th] will be the final culmination[meaning, I interpret, that things will come to a head]. Saturday it will be we who will have the stranglehold [upper hand] on all of this stuff; it is we who are going to decide what will happen … Law enforcement will end up joining us … "

RR is also running a cartoon of Macron (who is being called "the Brown Plague") talking with Marie Antoinette. She is saying her "Let them eat cake" thing and he is saying, "If they don't want to pay the fuel tax, let them buy an electric car."

James Dixon wrote:Our current home is over 100 years old. Do you expect any home built in the past 30 years to still be standing after that much time?

Yes, even the boom-time tract houses will probably last that long, if you keep them dry. I was a construction laborer in the late '70s, and saw the crap they were building. They weren't good, but a new roof every thirty years and they'll do.

#99It's kabuki from the fake nationalist government, they're trying to quell a voter insurrection. They launch such theater initiatives with regular intervals to distract from the fact that they do nothing to stem the influx of jihadis.

The so-called repatriation center is simply an open prison wing for illegals with a criminal record in Denmark, they'll be ferried over to the mainland and allowed to roam free during daytime.

Also, it's meant to contain less than 150 delinquents. And will never be built, so there's that too.

"Our current home is over 100 years old. Do you expect any home built in the past 30 years to still be standing after that much time?"

Observer bias, the houses built 100 years ago that fell down, burned down, slid off their foundations and such, are gone, so of course you don't see them. Tarpaper shacks and crappy clapboard homes are long gone. Can you build quality today? damn straight you can! Just as you could then, but we've made a lot of strides in construction material improvements that were simply un available 100 years ago

Thanks for that info. I didn't know that. So the PEGIDA folks borrowed it. But my point was that those words are now appearing on a French identitarian website, and my guess is that they mean it to echo PEGIDA, but that's just a guess.

They have indeed. Numerous ordinary Frenchmen have been beheaded by the Muzzies. Résistance républicaine website has done an outstanding job of covering that sort of thing through the years.

And on a related subject, as some comments here speak of armed rebellion in France: I remember reading on numerous French websites during the extraordinary summer of 2015 that ordinary Frenchmen were actively buying guns.

wahr01 wrote:People were able to buy housing, food, and access other essentials AT THE CURRENT TECHNOLOGY OF THE TIME for far less as a proportion of income than now.

Still not seeing it.

I'll say it again: real incomes have stagnated since 1974. Until 1974, real incomes were rising. That means that my parents had more real income than my grandparents, but I didn't get more real income than my parents.

In 1919, my grandfather was 31. He worked six days a week, and was renting a house and feeding a wife and child. He's not around to ask for specifics, but as I recall his stories, pretty much everything went to necessities. Grandma was having to work outside the house occasionally.

My father worked a 40 hour week, and did much better than grandpa, because of that rising real income thing. I work a 40 hour week, and do slightly less well than my father did a few decades ago, because of the stagnant real wages since I started working, and because of the housing bubble.

Today we count as necessities things that my parents counted as luxuries, and my grandparents counted as unattainable. We might spend more time earning those ``necessities,'' but we spend a good deal less time earning what grandpa considered necessary.

You and KekMando are doing the lolbertarian version of SJW history ret-conning: applying the standards of today to centuries ago.

Necessities (housing, food, education) were objectively cheaper back then, even if they weren't as advanced. If you didn't have a middle-class income, you could build it yourself without government interference for a 50% to 70% discount on the "retail price".

You can't do that anymore, thanks to boomers regulating it away, and in so doing pulling the ladder up with them.

I translated "Ils doivent partir" as "They have to go back" b/c I was linking it to their "We are France" statement, but I ought to have pointed out that "Ils doivent partir" could mean simply "They have to go," referring to the government. Gramatically, "Ils doivet partir" does mean simply "They have to go." But I was editorializing, and I'm not retracting my translation, just saying why I wrote it the way I did.

104. wahr01 December 05, 2018 3:38 PMPeople were able to buy housing, food, and access other essentials AT THE CURRENT TECHNOLOGY OF THE TIME for far less as a proportion of income than now.

that is so retarded.

"In Colonial America, agriculture was the primary livelihood for 90% of the population, and most towns were shipping points for the export of agricultural products. Most farms were geared toward subsistence production for family use."

ie - these people spent THE ENTIRE YEAR working to feed themselves. if they were lucky, they'd have a little bit left over to sell at market. and then maybe they could afford to buy some whale oil to burn in their lamps.

if they were unlucky, they went hungry. sometimes they starved.

https://infogalactic.com/info/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29

they had NEITHER quantity NOR quality. remember, 1800 was before canning and refrigeration. what are you going to be eating in April on the high plains of Montana? except for fresh kills, it's ALL going to be rancid, meat and vegetable alike. and you can forget about fruits altogether until well into the summer. you'd better enjoy jerky.

their houses were 'inexpensive' because THEY TENDED TO BUILD THEIR OWN.

https://infogalactic.com/info/Sod_house

you don't like how expensive your house is? there isn't anyone preventing from building your own today. take notes from the Amish.

you're sitting here comparing the surviving Century houses ( by definition, either the highest quality of their respective era OR houses which have been renovated or added to multiple times over the years, otherwise they'd have been torn down decades ago ) to current mass production.

that's not a like v like comparison.

and you seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that the "technology of the time" ( also, productivity ) hadn't changed significantly in thousands of years.

modern production tolerances and QC have revolutionized manufacturing in the last 200 years.

that's where the Wealth ( productivity ) explosion came from.

but that's back to the original question of whether society has been Zero Sum or not.

and it clearly has not been.

if you're unhappy with your working class wages...end immigration and free trade.

Macron is a pure swamp creature. He was selected and groomed to be president, with the help of the media who did a real hit job on the center-right candidate François Fillon. Anything to be against Marine Le Pen (literaly Hitler) during the 2nd round, ensuring a sure win.

Many people disliked him but voted for him anyway. Many people stayed home. So he was never really liked by French people, except by millenials living in Paris and other urban centers who really believed his bullshit about change and the "start-up nation".

Back to the Gilets Jaunes movement, there's been a lot of entryism by leftists since the movement began. They're actively trying to coopt the movement and push their usual bullshit. The media have been inviting professionnal leftists posing as Gilets Jaunes.The worst rioters were clearly far-left and "diversity" from the banlieues but the media and the government have been trying to pin it on the "ultra-right". Let's hope that this time people won't swallow the usual media lies.

The American in Paris that Vox quotes is right. If anything, his report is an understatement. Media reports are full of lies.

wahr01 wrote:How does a nation that voted 70/30 against LePen move in a couple years to showing more spine (and action) than Trump?

1) What makes you think there was no fraud ?

2) Macron had all the media working for him and truly excellent propaganda team, very good persuasion techniques. People basically woke up a few months later with a hangover, lots of butthurt and a strong feeling of "what have I done?"

3) Final results were 66% Macron but 25% of registered voters did not actually vote. Macron was not elected by a majority of registered voters.

pyrrhus wrote:the ordinary people do not look happy, while Africans lounge around in 2000 year old towns...

Moreover, and for extra humiliation, we are not legally allowed to complain about this in public, it is hate speech...

> Observer bias, the houses built 100 years ago that fell down, burned down, slid off their foundations and such, are gone,

What are the percentages involved in each case?

> Can you build quality today? damn straight you can!

Sure you can. That wasn't the question. What is the quality of the homes that are being built? I'm sure there are homes that will last. Again, what are the percentages?

> We might spend more time earning those ``necessities,'' but we spend a good deal less time earning what grandpa considered necessary.

The exact quote was "The essentials, such as housing, education, and food, are MUCH more expensive and much lower in quality than they were in 1800"

The quote is correct about the education system and about housing. I don't think it's correct about food. Is there more to the equation than that? Sure, and a lot of it makes life much easier/better. Electric lighting, electric appliances such as washing machines and dishwashers, clothes dryers, hot running water, indoor plumbing, modern electronics and computers, medical advances, etc.

But that doesn't change the fact that the quoted statement is correct on two of it's three counts.

Not correct about housing. You could build a 400 square foot uninsulated shotgun shack with an outhouse pretty cheaply today, just as you could in 1919. None of us would choose to live like that, because unlike our grandparents in 1919, we don't have to! . More of that rising realwages thing you keep ignoring.

> You could build a 400 square foot uninsulated shotgun shack with an outhouse pretty cheaply today, just as you could in 1919.

If the local government would allow you to do so, yes. I'm pretty sure it would still cost far more than it did then, even allowing for inflation, because the land on which it was built would cost more. I'm open to correction on that matter though.

While the early 19th century had some positive aspects for many, having surgery wasn't one of them. One of London's most famous and sought-after surgeons of the day, Dr. Liston (who invented the lancet later used by Jack the Ripper), managed to pull off a single surgery with a 300% mortality rate (patient, assistant and a bystander all dead). One was generally better off going to see a witch-doctor in those days. The medical profession has certainly improved since then but not as much as they want everyone to think.

We bought an existing home in 1994 on roughly 45 acres of land for $60K.I can't speak for the East, but around here, that 45 acres with well and septic would run around $500,000 now. And that's for remote unfarmable land with drainage problems. What you were able to do 25 years ago has nothing whatever todo with the current bubble market.

i have a Associates degree in Electronics and it doesn't get much simpler than a toaster, which is a resistive heater element connected in series to a timer with a spring loaded ejection mechanism.

pay up.

127. wahr01 December 05, 2018 4:25 PMThe average household was able to be self-sufficient!

if by "self-sufficient" you mean "starve to death on a semi-regular basis".

how that indicates MORE Wealth than anyone living the US today, i have no idea.

also, you can have all the Self Sufficiency you want, any time you want. people live off the grid all over the Western US.

heck, i know where there is a house out west of Hightown VA ( Highland County being the most sparsely populated area east of the Mississippi ) on US-250 that has no electric or land line phone service.

I read in Collapse of Complex Societies how collapse is sometimes a people just making rational economic decisions - to not continue to participate in the status quo if when there's negligable net benefit. Then shit happens.

The news did show it was a lot of middle aged whities. And as has been noticed more than once, us whites tend to have a higher tolerance but once that's breached, things change.

So this shift of attitude from among normal people (as opposed to career activists/ weekend warriors/ opportunistic migrants) may well be significant. And it's significant that they aren't impressed by the 6 mnth tax hike delay. I thought if they accepted that then the whole thing would fizzle out.

And the not insignificant proportion of civil servants 'turning their back' actually or figuratively - is not a positive indicator for the status quo.

Point again, if Mr and Mrs White actively and en-masse with-hold participation, then it may only be a matter of time before 'select' people are getting run out of town.

Roger that. Very welcome. A friend sent me this but she didn't cite the source. Said it's from "social media in France" and that she couldn't vouch for it other than that. But it confirms something I had read yesterday, which I didn't mention above:

my quick translation:

"To the general population. This is the calm before the storm!!! Set aside provisions, gasoline/oil. Stock up on food and medications!!! We are going to blockade everything on 10 December!!! We’ll stop when what we demand is actually done!!! We are fed up with being taken for idiots!!! We want to live, not merely survive!!! Join us on 10 December!! NO school, NO government functions! NO stores [open for business]!! We’re blocking airport entrances & exits!! The major public spaces! Offices!! [La Srpp – no idea]!! This is to notify the population!!! Join us at the different barricades, or [just] stay home [on Monday]! We Yellow Vests are nonviolent and we want actions, not just pretty words!!! December 10 TOGETHER!!!!&#65279"